Category-specific enhancement of retrieval due to field perspective

Two memory perspectives have been distinguished: A field perspective where events are re-experienced in the first person, and an observer perspective where events are witnessed in the third person. Two experiments examined the influence of memory perspective on objective memory performance. In both experiments participants were presented with a series of verbal passages, each of which contained several different categories of information. For four of these categories (pertaining to affective reactions, physical sensations, psychological states, and associated ideas), recall was significantly higher when a field perspective was adopted than when an observer perspective was adopted, but for the five other categories (pertaining to physical actions, personal appearance, fine details, spatial relations, and peripheral details) there was no significant effect of perspective upon recall. The study is examined in the context of mental models and imagined episodic events.     

Habermas and validity claims

At the heart of Jürgen Habermas’s explication of communicative rationality is the contention that all speech acts oriented to understanding raise three different kinds of validity claims simultaneously: claims to truth, truthfulness, and normative rightness. This paper argues that Habermas presents exactly three distinct, logically independent arguments for his simultaneity thesis: an argument from structure; an argument from criticizability/rejectability; and an argument from understanding/reaching understanding. It is further maintained that the simultaneity thesis receives cogent support only from the Argument from understanding/reaching understanding, and only if the notion of ‘understanding’ is expanded to that of ‘agreement’.     

Perceived sexual self-control and condom use with primary and casual sex partners: age and relationship agreement differences in a Portuguese sample

Abstract

Objective: Consistent condom use is still not ideal. Research showed that perceived sexual self-control is associated with greater likelihood of using condoms. However, this association seems to vary according to age and relationship agreement (i.e. non-consensual non-monogamy, NCNM vs. consensual non-monogamy, CNM).

Design: Cross-sectional study with 307 heterosexual users of a dating web site for romantically involved individuals (81.8% men; M_age = 42.24, SD?=?9.65, range: 23–76 years). All individuals were in a romantic relationship (M_length = 13.47 years, SD?=?9.39).

Measures: Demographic information, perceived sexual self-control, condom use frequency (casual sex partners; primary partner in the last 3 months) and relationship agreement.

Results: Independently of relationship agreement, perceived sexual self-control was positively associated with condom use frequency with casual sex partners among younger and middle age participants, but not older ones (>49 years). Regarding the primary partner, a similar pattern emerged for CNM participants. In contrast, no significant association between perceived sexual self-control and condom use frequency with the primary partner emerged for NCNM individuals, regardless of age.

Conclusion: Our findings can inform evidence-based strategies to promote consistent condom use as an effective behaviour to prevent sexually transmitted infections, especially among older and NCNM individuals.     

A multi-informant study of the influence of targets’ and perceivers’ social desirability on self-other agreement in ratings of the HEXACO personality dimensions

In the current research we evaluated the impact of socially desirable responding on the strength of self-other agreement in personality judgments. We used a multi-informant design with self- and other-reports of HEXACO personality dimensions as well as self-reported and other-reported social desirability. Analyses were based on 305 primary participants and 709 informants. As shown by the results, neither self-other agreement nor other-other agreement regarding the personality dimensions was affected by social desirability. Furthermore, significant correlations between self-rated and other-rated social desirability emerged. The results are discussed as further evidence that most social desirability scales seem to measure substantive personality traits instead of response styles.     

Exploring Counselor-Client Agreement on Clients’ Work Capacity in Established and Consultative Dyads

Counselor-client agreement on the work capacity of clients living with serious mental illnesses informs the counseling relationship and facilitates accurate assessments of client eligibility for public programs. In this exploratory mixed-methods study, we assessed counselor-client agreement on clients’ work capacity in 61 established therapeutic dyads and compared it with 30 dyads involved in an initial assessment session. Intraclass correlation coefficients and mountain plots were used to examine counselor-client agreement. Results revealed moderate counselor-client agreement of work capacity for both dyads. Counselor interviews illuminated sources of discordance. These results have practical implications for assessing the work capacity of clients.     

Emotions as strategic information: Effects of other’s emotional expressions on fixed-pie perception, demands, and integrative behavior in negotiation

Negotiators often fail to reach integrative (”win-win”) agreements because they think that their own and other’s preferences are diametrically opposed—the so-called fixed-pie perception. We examined how verbal (Experiment 1) and nonverbal (Experiment 2) emotional expressions may reduce fixed-pie perception and promote integrative behavior. In a two-issue computer-simulated negotiation, participants negotiated with a counterpart emitting one of the following emotional response patterns: (1) anger on both issues, (2) anger on participant’s high priority issue and happiness on participant’s low-priority issue, (3) happiness on high priority issue and anger on low-priority issue, or (4) happiness on both issues. In both studies, the third pattern reduced fixed-pie perception and increased integrative behavior, whereas the second pattern amplified bias and reduced integrative behavior. Implications for how emotions shape social exchange are discussed.     

比较母亲和老师对幼儿亲社会行为的评价：一致性和预测性

采用儿童移情和亲社会反应量表,由母亲（n=86）和老师（n=8）分别对86名3-5岁儿童进行评价,并记录实验情境中儿童的亲社会反应,考察母评和师评间的一致性,以及两种评价对儿童亲社会反应的预测性。结果发现：（1）母评得分高于师评,两种评价只在男孩中存在中等程度正相关;（2）只有师评能预测男孩的亲社会反应,两种评价对女孩的亲社会反应都有预测作用。结果提示评价者间的差异反映了不同评价者在儿童亲社会行为关注点上的特点。     

Switching memory perspective

The perspective in which memories were spontaneously recalled, field (original perspective) or observer (see oneself in the memory), was examined for both recent and remote memories. Recent memories were dominated by field perspective whilst remote memories were dominated by observer perspective. Further, field memories contained reliably more episodic detail than observer memories. After a 1-week interval, the same memories were recalled again but with a switched memory perspective. Switching from an observer to a field perspective did not reliably increase the amount of episodic details in a memory. Switching from field to observer perspective did, however, reliably reduce the number of episodic details. These findings suggest that memories may be represented in long-term memory with a fixed perspective, either field or observer, which can be temporarily altered sometimes changing the nature of a memory, i.e. how much detail remains accessible.     

Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging: evidence from subject-verb agreement in German

Effects of aging on lexical processing are well attested, but the picture is less clear for grammatical processing. Where age differences emerge, these are usually ascribed to working-memory (WM) decline. Previous studies on the influence of WM on agreement computation have yielded inconclusive results, and work on aging and subject-verb agreement processing is lacking. In two experiments (Experiment 1: timed grammaticality judgment, Experiment 2: self-paced reading + WM test), we investigated older (OA) and younger (YA) adults’ susceptibility to agreement attraction errors. We found longer reading latencies and judgment reaction times (RTs) for OAs. Further, OAs, particularly those with low WM scores, were more accepting of sentences with attraction errors than YAs. OAs showed longer reading latencies for ungrammatical sentences, again modulated by WM, than YAs. Our results indicate that OAs have greater difficulty blocking intervening nouns from interfering with the computation of agreement dependencies. WM can modulate this effect.